Renovation Quotes

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

The quote for our renovations has arrived and it came in a little higher than expected. I think we underestimated the amount of time and fittings that would be needed to fix up the roof of this old place and had also wanted to move the kitchen to a point where there is no existing plumbing - also a major money drain. Who would have thought our zero experience in this area would have lead us to underestimate?

The money really isn't the issue here, what it comes down to in the end is whether this place is where we want to live for the next 10 or more years. If it is, then the extra cost to get it looking how we want it too is totally worth it but if it isn't, then its best to do the minimum on this renovation and move on sooner. We have decided that our goal is to build a place at the back of our block, so we are going to scale back this renovation. No raising the roofline, no extra windows and kind of leave the kitchen where it is but turn it into a galley kitchen instead. I think the kitchen idea is actually much better than what we had planned as it will still leave us with two somewhat, at least visually, separate living areas, which is what we have now and it works quite well. Below is the floor plan as it is now, except that the draftsman has already drawn in how he proposed to solve our dilemma of one of the bedrooms only being accessible through the other.

The list of things that will change is as follows:
1. Create a door way to Lulu's room that isn't off the spare room so that there are three separate bedrooms
2. Demolish carport walls (and not shown on plan archways!) and cut back roof to get a little more light in.
3. Change kitchen to a small galley kitchen with an island bench & remove all walls between the front and back of the house.
4. New bathroom fit out. Change the design.
5. New patio out the back. This is also where we are going to put the laundry in cupboards against the back of the house. At the moment it lives behind the kitchen, in our lounge room.
6. Paint the exterior. It's a pale shade of pink with heritage green trim. While it does match all the pink flowering plants in our garden, it really has to go.

Now that we're changing the plans again, it's back to the beginning in terms of quoting, once we have the new drawings. To save time, our builder said that as soon as we had the new plans, send them to get the engineering quoted on at the same time that he's looking at it then send it straight through for building approval. Wish us luck!